Board 8 > Gen 2 Pokemon fans, I am puzzled.

(+) Yeah! (+)

Recently we recorded a video where myself and friend chose 6 of our best, max trained Pokemon and faught against each other in Pokemon Stadium 2 and the weirdest thing happened that I cannot explain.

He was using a curse lax, and I had used Thunder Wave on it right out of the gate. He used Curse twice, and landed a Body Slam on my Zapdos which of course fainted it.

I sent out Machamp, who missed his first Cross Chop (oof) and immediately got hit by a Body Slam, which paralyzed him.

...And then Snorlax out sped him. Consistently. He was Paralyzed, and had 2 speed step drops from the Curse. What gives?! This made for a terrifying battle having a paralyzed Snorlax outspeed you. No Quick Claws were involved at all either. He had Leftovers equipped.

I then sent out Marowak, who I also used Curse twice with. And even without being Paralyzed SNORLAX STILL WENT FIRST. Is this a known glitch or am I totally missing something?

Here is the battle in Question, 40:30ish mark:

https://youtu.be/NVeV8nRB2Gc?t=2425

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Without even thinking twice I will say yes, glitch with stadium

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let's just say something like stadium 2 has weird math and you both reduced your speed to 0 resulting in a speed tie

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Can you reduce it to 0? I always thought it was percentage based, and we were both level 100 so lots to work with.

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Were there any items involved?

Edit: NEvermind I can't read. This is truly stupefying
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Yeah I'm not sure. I'm chalking it up to PS2 glitchy-ness. But even then I demand an explanation cause good lord I got wrecked.

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Only thing I can think of is that the combination of paralysis and speed drops contained a miscalculation. So instead of...

Speed * (2/4)[stat drops] * (1/4)[paralysis]

It was for example calculated as

Speed * (2/4)[stat drops] / (1/4)[paralysis]

You would have to look at the game code for the true calculation.

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ITT: we discover Iwata was a fraud

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Right off the bat you can see that the Pokemon don't have max stats (you can tell by their HP values). So it's safe to assume that their other stats are not maxed. It's possible for a well trained Snorlax to outspeed a lesser trained Machamp under normal conditions, which would also apply if they were both paralyzed.

The Curse makes it weird though. You can discard any theories about "underflow speed" because Snorlax was outsped by healthy Machamp and Marawak on their first turns. Even a max speed para Snorlax at -1 should be slower than a min speed para Machamp according to the speed formula. My first guess was a strange interaction between Curse and paralysis. Gen 1 had a glitch where stat modifications from status were recalculated wrong if a Pokemon used a stat changing move, but this glitch was supposedly fixed in gen 2 (and furthermore should not exist in the Stadium games). It may be some kind of similar thing (although not the exact same scenario as gen 1).

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-hotdogturtle-- posted...

Gen 1 had a glitch where stat modifications from status were recalculated wrong if a Pokemon used a stat changing move, but this glitch was supposedly fixed in gen 2 (and furthermore should not exist in the Stadium games). It may be some kind of similar thing (although not the exact same scenario as gen 1).

This was my first thought. That glitch was definitely fixed in Stadium 1 and Gen 2, but it wouldn't be that weird to see a similar glitch in Stadium 2 or even for it to go unnoticed. (Why would anyone ever bother looking into Stadium 2 battle mechanics when there was never any reason to play it competitively?)
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Sorry, when I said max stats I meant they've been Stat Exp grinded to their peak. Their IVs are not max, I didn't bother breeding max IVs since it makes not a huge difference, and the game was easily beaten without it.

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It's really hard to tell without knowing their stats because we have to make a lot of assumptions about the natural speed of the Pokemon involved. But it is possible that there was some glitch causing Snorlax's paralysis to not be dropping its speed like it should be. Using a high speed Snorlax (at -1 Speed but not including the para drop) and mid to low speed Machamp and Marowak as examples, you make make the calcs match for Machamp before/after para and Marowak before/after Cursing.

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wg64Z posted...

Sorry, when I said max stats I meant they've been Stat Exp grinded to their peak. Their IVs are not max, I didn't bother breeding max IVs since it makes not a huge difference, and the game was easily beaten without it.

Oh, then Snorlax has 0 DV in HP, lol.

Knowing this should make it a bit easier to test numbers though.

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Snorlax Speed: 140
Machamp Speed: 192
Marowak Speed: 160

(If you go back a bit earlier in the episode you can see all their stats when we choose our team)

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Snorlax normal: 140
Expected speed when Paralyzed: 35
Expected speed at -1: 92
Expected speed when Paralyzed at -1: 23

Machamp normal: 192
Machamp speed when Paralyzed: 48

Marowak normal: 160
Marowak speed at -1: 105
Marowak speed at -2: 80

Yup, my guess is that Snorlax's Curse somehow negated his speed drop from paralysis, so he was running with an effective speed stat of 92

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Seems fair. This victory shall forever have an asterisk.

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Xeybozn posted...

This was my first thought. That glitch was definitely fixed in Stadium 1 and Gen 2, but it wouldn't be that weird to see a similar glitch in Stadium 2 or even for it to go unnoticed. (Why would anyone ever bother looking into Stadium 2 battle mechanics when there was never any reason to play it competitively?)

Pokemon Mechanic research is as old as Pokemon itself. People did it back then just because they could.

http://www.angelfire.com/pa4/jman/statcond.html

"In Stadium 2, the changes are different. If a stat-raising move is used on or by a pokemon that is afflicted, the computer will "forget" about the stat penalty and increase the stat as if the stat-increaser were the only modification to the stat. Unlike the Gameboy bug, if a stat-decreaser is subsequently used, the computer will not "remember" the stat penalty. It will simply modify the stat in conjunction with the other stat modifications. Just as in the Gameboy games, the only stat-alterations that will be passed on by Baton Pass will be those induced by moves, not those from the Paralysis. Unlike the Gameboy games, the computer will not "forget" the penalty if stat-increasers are passed to a Paralysis victim. The computer will "forget" the penalty if a move used for stat-increases is used on or by the afflicted pokemon after it is in play, however. "
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